Why is The One Show so bafflingly popular?

Is it beardy Adrian Chiles? Is it the lovely Christine Bleakley? The squirming celebs? Or just the fact it's always there …

The One Show – tune in tonight, tomorrow, any weekday at 7pm to see a beardier Adrian Chiles. Photograph: BBC

For those who do not watch The One Show, the amount of coverage devoted to Adrian Chiles's threat to leave the BBC programme if he is replaced by Chris Evans on Fridays, has been astonishing. This is basically a story about a man with a rather grumpy demeanour who may leave a television programme that regularly contains dangerous levels of Gyles Brandreth – but it's being treated like the death of a minor royal. We never got anything like this when Bill Oddie left Springwatch.

So why is The One Show so bafflingly ubiquitous given that it's essentially a half-hour version of This Morning without even any hilarious phone-ins about pet bereavement? Maybe it's because it's always there. Whatever sort of day you've had, you know that you can always turn on at seven o'clock and watch a feature about the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 like it's the most important thing that's ever existed. In this crazy world, that's as close to a comfort as some people get.

Or it could be down to the breadth of subjects that The One Show covers. It doesn't matter whether you want to know about sharia law or the history of bannisters, chances are you're never more than three days away from either. Or maybe it's down to The One Show's determination to keep its celebrity guest onscreen for the entire show. Say what you like about Jonathan Ross, but he's never ambushed a terrified-looking Martine McCutcheon with a question about her thoughts on eel distribution. That's the sort of thing that The One Show does every day.

Or maybe – just maybe – The One Show is so popular because there's nothing else on at 7pm during the week. Take tonight, for instance - you're not dull enough to watch Emmerdale, or stupid enough to watch Live From Studio Five, you've already seen Coast and you never watch Channel 4 News even though you tell everybody that you do. What does that leave? That's right, The One Show. You might not love it, but at least it's not Live From Studio Five.